Sue and Lee's Vegetable Allotment pages, detailing all that we've been doing on our allotments, from clearing the 8' tall weeds that they were covered in when we started with our first plot in October 2006, through to where we are today, with 2 neighbouring full sized productive organic vegetable growing plots, 2 apiaries and 6 Beehives!!

FYI

Clicking on any of the pictures will open them at full size in the browser window, which means you will have to use the 'back' button to return to the main pages, whereas clicking to the left or right of any picture will open them in a new window, if you fancy a closer look at any of the piccies we've posted! We've included a Google Earth satelite picture of our plots and this years planting plan at the bottom of the page, next to each other. If you choose the Earth view on the satelite image you can rotate the image until it is lined up with the planting plan, then use the arrows in the plan to scroll from Plot 2 to Plot 1.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Harvesting, piccies and the balance sheet moves into credit!

Today was a day of harvesting, with the recent rain its still too wet to hoe, so a bit of handweeding was all we managed, apart from getting some of the crops that are ready harvested!

We met up with Pat and Colin, plus 2 of the folks from Trafford Council to have a chat about the community orchard, Pat came up with the idea of either espaliered or cordoned fruit trees along the right hand side of the orchard plot would make a great feature aswell as giving us a clearly demarked boundary, so its probably the way we'll look at going with it!

One of Lee's workmates met us on the plot, to have a look at why Lee does very little overtime at work, his usual excuse is 'I've got 2 plots to look after', he ended up picking himself some rasps, and digging up some first early spuds with Lee for his tea! Needless to say when he left it was with lettuce, spuds, broad beans, raspberries, garlic and courgettes!

These are the 20lb of first early spuds that Lee dug up from one of the blighted spud beds, about 2 lb per plant, not a great harvest, but the spuds look really good!

We were going to take both the early spud beds up, but after harvesting this lot we thought we'd leave the others for a week or so yet!

More courgettes, we've already got a glut of these at home, so some courgette recipies are going to be researched this weekend!

As the GYO magazine forum (the Grapevine) has an online veg show (for fun only), I took a few pictures of some of the crops ready for entry when the categories are opened in September!

We also took 2 reasonably large peppers today, we shared one with another plotholder, and the other one is now here at home!

We also managed to harvest the garlic today, 140 bulbs of garlic from saved cloves (that have been naturalised to our region by replanting the best ones every year), about 15 or so were quite small, the majority tho were a decent size, and 1 in particular was enormous!

Just look at the size of that garlic bulb!! In total there's about £70 worth of organic garlic that we've harvested today!

And cleaned up ready for entry to the GYO virtual veg competition!

We also had a great harvest of french beans today, as the piccy shows, a rather smug trug, and the plants are still dripping with beans!

The early sowed broad beans are just about finished now, but the later sown ones are just beginning to bulk up nicely!

Another plotholder gave us a spur of blackcurrants, which are now in the dehydrator to make our own currants! We also managed to get a cutting from the spur, so hopefully we'll have our own blackcurrant bush next year!

In addition to these piccies of the harvests we also took our first (admittedly small) cabbage, another few lb of early peas, another lettuce and a few lb of rasps (the summer fruiting rasps are now coming to an end, but the autumn fruiting are looking good for a great harvest!

So, 2 of the beds on plot 2 are now empty, tho the one from which the spuds came will have some leeks in it on Sunday (after work), we just need to rake it flat and pop the leeks in! The bed the garlic was in still has some onions in it, but once they are ready, then we'll be putting some spring cabbages into it!

The toms in the greenhouses are also coming along nicely, these are in the larger 10'x8' on plot2, plenty of fruit, and the first ones do appear to be starting to ripen now!

The other side of the 10'x8' greenhouse!

And the next cucumber is on its way, with lots of flowers to produce more fruit in the coming weeks!

The late broad beans (that I mentioned earlier) are looking good for another good crop of beans! We should have enough in the freezer to see us thrugh till next year!

The (slightly skewed) repaired hothouse, next year we are going to treat ourself to a new one, a proper bought one like we've seen on another plot, but until then we'll soldier on with this one! The plants tho dont care what accomodation they have and seem to be doing really well!

More peppers coming along nicely.........

........... And chillies! Looks like it may be a good year for them this year!

The late sown runners are just starting to flower..............

................. whereas the early sown 0nes are flowering well and beginning to produce pods!

The borlotti beans are also flowering well, so there should be a good harvest from them............

.............. and the climbing french beans are just starting to flower now, so we're still hopeful of a reasonable crop from them this year!

The first sweetcorn tassles are now visible...............

......... and the underplanting of squashes and pumpkins are also setting some decent sized fruit too!

So, all in all the crops arent looking too bad at all, still plenty of opportunity for the plots to produce their best ever year of produce!

4 comments:

Hi IG, yep, we do get beans in them there pods, occassionally there's one with a bean missing, which usually means that it wasnt pollinated, but generally we do well with them! The first batch were sown at home in modules, then transplanted in November under a cloche, then left to it basically! The first batch were a mixture of bunyards exhibition and witkeim IIRC, hope this helps!

Lol Jeannie, thanks for the compliment! Actually, did you know Harrods actually have allotments? On their roof I believe, tho whether anyone actually digs them Im not sure, I certainly think they wouldnt like me in my gardening clothes walking through the store to get to them! Lol!

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About Me

I'm a 40 something yr old woman, married to a great guy, Lee, for the past 12 years, am a practicing Pagan Witch, and enjoy life to its fullest extent! Currently we are both enjoying growing our own veg (on our 2 organic allotments), looking after our 6 colonies of apis melifora (honey bee) and practicing my photography (on my ebay special Canon EOS10D) I work as a store manager for a finance provider, and enjoy reading, writing, cooking, camping and many other things besides! We are both passionate dog owners with many years of experience of providing a loving friendly home to our furbabies.

Beekeeping Links

Satelite picture of our Plots - Google Earth

View Larger Map
Switch to Earth view and drag the north marker round to the 4 'o'clock position to orientate them in the same way as the planting plans! Please note, the satelite picture is from last year, when we had the brassicas where the sweetcorn and squashes are this year!

Planting Plan 2010

Use the arrows to switch between Plots 2 (the left hand plot) and Plot 1 (the right hand plot)